Plague

do that in front of Jamal.
    “Start hauling rock,” Drake said. “You have to pile it, like, back over there.” He pointed a relatively flat space. “I don’t know how far the rock fall goes. It may take us a while. Put Brittney Pig to work when she comes back.”
    For two hours or more they lifted and carried. It would have helped if they had a wheelbarrow. It would have helped if Jamal’s arm weren’t broken. They had to lift each chunk of stone, each shattered timber. Some were big enough that they had to each take an end. Some were so big they couldn’t even budge them and had to just go around them.
    At the end of two hours they’d moved no more than a foot and a half deeper into the shaft.
    Brittney had reappeared once during that time and she had bought into the idea of helping with the digging. But Drake couldn’t kid himself: they weren’t getting anywhere. It could take months. Years. Forever.
    The coyotes came and went, watching, no doubt thinking about eating Jamal. So when Drake heard the sound of movement coming from around the bend in the road, he assumed it was coyotes.
    Only it wasn’t the usual stealthy pad-pad-pad of coyotes. This was a sound with clicks and sudden rushes.
    Drake wiped his brow and turned warily toward the sound.
    It looked like something from a science fiction movie. Like an alien or a robot or something, because it was way too big to be just an insect.
    It was silver and bronze, dully reflective. It had an insect’s head with prominent, gnashing mouthparts that made Drake think of a Benihana chef flashing knives ceremonially. Its wickedly curved mandibles of black horn or bone protruded from the side of its mouth.
    It smelled like curry and ammonia. Bitter but with a tinge of curdled sweetness.
    More came now, scurrying up beside the first. They had eyes and antennae. The eyes were arresting: royal blue irises that could almost pass as human. But with nothing of human awareness, nothing of human vulnerability or emotion. Like ice chips.
    They ran in a rush on six legs, stopping, starting, then skittering forward again at alarming speed. Their tarnished silver wings folded back against bronze carapaces, like beetles or cockroaches. The wings sometimes flared slightly as they ran.
    Bugs. Maybe. But each at least five feet long and three feet tall, with antennae adding another foot.
    Drake stared into the soulless blue eyes of the first bug.
    He was ready with his whip hand, and Jamal was ready with his rifle, but Drake didn’t like his chances much if they were looking for a fight. There were a dozen of the creatures, jostling around one another, like ants pouring from a mound or wasps storming angrily from a disturbed hive.
    Drake felt a stab of fear: could he survive being eaten? Chopped into chunks by those gnashing mouths and swallowed?
    A coyote, keeping a cautious distance, loped to the top of the rise and spoke in the strangled speech his species had achieved.
    “See the Darkness,” the coyote said.
    “Them?” Drake asked. The coyotes and these monstrosities could communicate? “They want to see the Darkness? Fine,” Drake said. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the mine. “Go for it.”
    “They hungry,” the coyote said.
    Drake didn’t have to ask what he was supposed to do about that. Because now the same foul, insinuating voice that was speaking through the coyote reached him directly, touched his willing, submissive mind and flooded it with a deep and awful joy.
    Drake closed his eyes and rocked slowly back and forth, feeling the touch of his master.
    Soon Drake would be with the Darkness. The Darkness would give him all he needed. And Jamal had served his purpose.
    “So tell them to eat something,” Drake said. “Sorry, Jamal.”
    “What?” Jamal waited for Drake to laugh, like it was a joke. But Drake just smiled and winked and said, “Dude, sooner or later I was going to kill you anyway.”
    “No, no!” Jamal gasped. He backed away. He turned and ran.
    The nearest bug, icy blue eyes focused with terrible intensity, flashed out something that might have been a tongue. It was black, and as thick as a rope with a barbed tip like a cluster of fishhooks. The tongue caught Jamal’s leg and Jamal fell facedown.
    “Drake! Drake!” Jamal yelled. “Please!”
    Drake laughed. He gave a little wave as the rope tongue yanked Jamal toward his doom.
    Jamal fired. BLAM BLAM BLAM. At close range, then closer range, then inches from the